Decline of the Landline

Tile Grid

Photo by Sanjoy Saha on Unsplash

Mr. Watson—Come here—I want to see you…
— Alexander Graham Bell, first words spoken on a telephone

Ingest

landline subscriptions

landline <- read.csv("archetypes/phone-subscriptions/landline-usage.csv", header = TRUE)
landline

Ingest

mobile subscriptions

mobile <- read.csv("archetypes/phone-subscriptions/mobile-phone-usage.csv", header = TRUE)
mobile

Wrangle

join, group, and summarize by decade

phones <- landline %>% 
  select(entity, year, landline_subs) %>% 
  left_join(mobile) %>% 
  mutate(decade = year %/% 10 * 10) %>% 
  group_by(entity, decade) %>% 
  mutate(
    median_landline_subs = median(landline_subs, na.rm = TRUE),
    median_mobile_subs = median(mobile_subs, na.rm = TRUE)
    ) %>% 
  ungroup() %>% 
  distinct(entity, code, decade, median_landline_subs, median_mobile_subs) %>% 
  group_by(entity) %>% 
  fill(code) %>% 
  ungroup() %>% 
  group_by(entity, decade) %>% 
  mutate(
    most = if_else(median_landline_subs > median_mobile_subs, "landline", "smartphone"),
    img = if_else(!is.na(most), paste0("archetypes/phone-subscriptions/", most, ".png"), NULL)
    ) %>% 
  ungroup() %>% 
  left_join(world_countries_grid1, by = c("entity" = "name"))

phones

View

tiles with symbols by year

theme_opts <- theme(
    text = element_text(family = "inconsolata"), 
    plot.title = element_text(color = "black", size = 14, face = "bold", family = "inconsolata"),
    plot.subtitle = element_text(color = "black", size = 12, family = "inconsolata"),
    plot.caption = element_text(color = "#555555", size = 8, family = "inconsolata"),    
    plot.margin = margin(10, 10, 10, 10),
    plot.background = element_rect(fill = "grey97", color = NA)
)

v1 <- ggplot(phones) +
  geom_image(aes(col, -row - decade * 2.5, image = img), size = 0.014, asp = 0.8) +
  geom_text(aes(-8, -10 - decade * 2.5, label = paste0("'", str_sub(decade, -2, -1), "s")), size = 10, stat = "unique", family = "inconsolata", color = "black", alpha = 0.8) +
  labs(
    title = toupper("The fall of landline"),
    subtitle = "Indicating majority share of phone subscriptions (landline or mobile)\nas median values by country and decade"
    ) +
  coord_cartesian(clip = "off") +
  xlim(-14, 34) +
  theme_void() +
  theme_opts

girafe(ggobj = v1, width_svg = 12, height_svg = 16,
       options = list(opts_sizing(rescale = TRUE, width = 0.8)))

References

citations for narrative and data sources

Data: OurWorldInData.org
View: Georgios Karamanis